Wednesday, March 09, 2011

Chunky Lola Cookies

My mother teaches a class in her home every Friday afternoon. For the past few weeks, she’s hired me to bake something for her students. I know, I know: my mother hires me to bake! Nepotism, indeed. But there’s no denying it: I can make a mean cookie. And this one, right here? It’s especially good.

Chunky Lola Cookies

These kitchen-sink cookies - crunchy with walnuts and melty with chunks of dark chocolate - come from Joanne Chang’s recent cookbook, Flour, which I've written about before. Here, I swapped her suggested pecans for walnuts, which I toasted lightly in the oven before chopping and adding to the dough. I also swapped sweetened coconut flakes for unsweetened. This was in part due to the fact that I only had unsweetened coconut in my pantry, but also because I like my cookies to be sweet but not too sweet, and cutting the added sugar in the flakes of coconut is a good way to tone that down a bit. Finally, instead of measuring out a ¼ cup ball of dough to make a big, beefy cookie, I used a heaping tablespoon full to create a more manageable disk. I reduced the cooking time as a result.

Ingredients:

½ cup plus 3 tablespoons unsalted butter, room temperature

⅔ cup granulated sugar

⅔ cup light brown sugar

2 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 ¼ cup flour

⅔ cup old fashioned rolled oats

1 teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon kosher salt

9 ounces dark chocolate, chopped

1 ¼ cup walnut halves, lightly toasted and chopped

1 cup unsweetened shredded coconut

Directions:

In a standing mixer (or by hand, with a wooden spoon) cream the butter and sugars. In the mixer, this takes about five minutes at medium speed. By hand, with some added vim and vigor, this takes about ten. Add the eggs and vanilla and mix until fully incorporated.

In a separate bowl, mix together the flour, oats, baking soda, and salt. Toss in the chocolate, nuts, and coconut and stir to combine. Then, add the dry goods to the butter and egg mixture slowly, mixing or stirring until all of the odds and ends are fully incorporated into the dough. Wrap the cookie dough snug in plastic and place in the fridge for 3 – 4 hours, or overnight.

When you’re ready to bake, preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Use a tablespoon to create balls of dough (a heaping tablespoon full) and place them an inch or two apart on a baking sheet. Squish each ball down with the palm of your hand to create a flat disk. Bake for around 10 - 13 minutes. The edges will be bronzed and the center still a bit soft. Let cool on the baking sheet for a few minutes, and then transfer the cookies a wire rack. Enjoy!

4 comments:

I'm really embarrassed by this, but I have recently been buying so many half pound cookies from Levain in lieu of dinner recently that these cookies look almost lilliputian. I need to start baking my own again! These sound great :)

When I baked the cornmeal lime cookies from the Flour cookbook, I also reduced the 1/4 cup to about a tablespoon. If there's such a thing as too much cookie, I think one that's 1/4 in size would qualify. Happy to know I'm not the only one who kind of went, wow, that's a lot of cookie!

The cornmeal lime cookies were as delectable in my kitchen as they were in the bakery. I had hoped to blog about them months ago but kept on getting distracted by vegetables. Maybe in a few weeks...at least before Passover...